Photo: Chip Clark/Smithsonian Institution/Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Division of Birds.
Ornithologist Roxie Laybourne, originator of forensic ornithology, examining a feather.
I love reading murder mysteries. Not all of them, mind you. I’m a sucker for any mystery from a foreign country or unfamiliar culture, but I recently discarded an Icelandic one that was too noir.
I love mysteries partly for the sense of helping a detective solve a puzzle, and for learning new things. Sometimes it’s a country I’m learning about, sometimes a science. After reading today’s article, I am hoping there will soon be a mystery based on the scientific career of Roxie Laybourne.
Chris Sweeney wrote at the Boston Globe Magazine recently about the “mild-mannered scientist” who created the field of forensic ornithology.
“Murders weren’t Roxie Laybourne’s forte, but she had a job to do. On the evening of April 26, 1972, the 61-year-old ornithologist climbed into the back seat of a detective’s car at Bangor International Airport. … As the car neared the hotel, she noticed a smattering of peculiar structures lining the sides of the road. …
“At her hotel, Laybourne received a handwritten letter from Peter Culley, the young state prosecutor who’d soon be interrogating her on the witness stand. … Culley, a lifelong Mainer who was just a few years out of law school, had plotted an exhaustive case against Henry Andrews, a 35-year-old laborer who stood accused in state court of the brutal murder of Hazel Doak, his elderly former landlord. Laybourne would appear in the penultimate act of the prosecutor’s script, the last witness he’d call before closing arguments. …
“She was an authority — perhaps the authority — on feathers. Culley hoped that if any embers of doubt were still smoldering in the jury box by the time Laybourne took the stand, she’d extinguish them by offering up scientific analysis showing that feathers recovered from the scene of the crime matched bits of feather that were found on Andrews’s clothing at the time he was apprehended. …
“Build an economy on the back of butchered chickens and life will get messy. As Laybourne observed on her first morning in town, the industry’s leftovers were everywhere. Some residents had to rake feathers off their lawns and others complained of a foul stench that would drift through their yards. Most unappetizing was the steady stream of putrefied byproduct that flowed out of the processing plants and into Penobscot Bay. The bloody, fatty industrial runoff caked the shoreline and congealed into a blanket that bobbed atop the water. At low tide, a rust-colored stain could be seen on the rocks and sand, earning Belfast the unfortunate nickname ‘the City with a Bathtub Ring.’ …
“To showcase the local industry’s might, Belfast started hosting an annual Maine Broiler Day in 1948. What began as a one-day barbecue soon ballooned into a weekend-long bonanza of grilled protein and ice-cold beverages. State and local politicians strutted through the crowds to press the flesh with constituents and the chicken companies sponsored a Broiler Queen contest in which women were judged on ‘poise, personality and appearance,’ according to the New England Historical Society. …
“On the weekend of July 17, 1971, however, the celebration soured. That’s when, according to prosecutors, Henry Andrews blew into town on Friday with two friends who were ready to party.
“Drinks flowed early and the first place Andrews took his buddies was a sturdy white farmhouse a mile outside of town. He had rented a room there a few years earlier while clearing trees on the surrounding property. During the impromptu visit, Andrews found Hazel Doak, a 71-year-old widow who had lived there for more than 20 years. She was Andrews’s landlord during his time in town and the relationship was allegedly rocky.
‘Doak didn’t appreciate Andrews showing up unannounced that Friday: After a tense exchange, she asked the two men accompanying Andrews to remove him from her property and get lost. They complied, shook off the uncomfortable start to the weekend, and made their way into town for dinner and a night of drinking.
“Around 1:45 a.m., an inebriated Andrews reportedly ditched his pals and teetered over to the Main Street taxi stand, where, through droopy eyes and slurred words, he asked for a ride back to the Doak farm. …
“At 10:30 the next morning, Doak’s longtime friend Edith Ladd pulled up to the house. The two women had spoken on the phone the previous night and made plans to head over to the broiler festival together. Ladd went to the back entrance that she typically used and found it still latched shut. She went around to the front of the house, where the door swung wide open. Inside, she found Doak’s lifeless body heaped on a bed, clad in nothing but a nightgown. …
“Ladd called the police and huddled in her car with her daughter, grandson, and other family members, who had been waiting patiently to get to the festival. When the officers arrived, they followed the trail of feathers downstairs and found the cellar door cracked open. The best they could surmise, someone had grabbed Doak’s pillow and smothered her with such force that it burst the pillow open and sent feathers everywhere, including onto the murderer. …
“Near the end of the weekend, a soaking-wet Andrews walked into the Belfast Police Station and, according to police testimony, allegedly declared, ‘I came to give myself up.’ …
“The sheriffs on duty knew exactly who Andrews was and what he was wanted for. They placed him under arrest and collected his clothes — and the feathers that were stuck to them. Police sent several bags of evidence to the FBI for careful analysis at the bureau’s crime lab in Washington, D.C. …
“Knowing the murder weapon was a pillow, the agents in Washington understood that the feathers stuck to his clothes might be a key piece of trace evidence, but they had no clue how to analyze them in any meaningful way. Fortunately, they had heard all about a little old lady named Roxie Laybourne over at the Smithsonian.”
Now I’ve done the unforgivable for a mystery! I’ve left you with a cliffhanger. You’ll have to read the rest of the story at the Globe, here. It’s a long one.
Photo: Rafael Bessa
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